They exist!
People who can drive. I encountered one of them yesterday. He was driving – of al things – an old PT Cruiser. The latter used to be a sure sign of a pending Clover Encounter as these rigs seemed to be favored by the type of driver who sees speed limits as the sound barrier was once seen – as in something that dare not be approached, let alone exceeded. For – surely – death will be the result.
But time has passed and – by now – the P.T. Cruiser is an old car and so you may find (as I did) that it is driven by someone who is not afraid to drive the speed limit – or even (gasp!) a little bit faster than that.
This guy also managed to keep his P.T. Cruiser in its lane – without the “assistance” of Lane Keeping Assistance, which was not available when the P.T. was available new. Yet this P.T. driver didn’t wander over the double yellow, then over-correct and drive half-way off the right shoulder.
You see? It is possible.
It was pleasant encountering another driver who can but also a rueful reminder that such drivers are the exception rather than the rule.
Still it was nice, for a change.
. . .
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[…] https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2025/11/10/look-a-non-clover/ […]
This story illustrates the principle of it’s better to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.
I used to pilot a 1981 Toyota Starlet, one of the slower cars on the road with a top speed of 87. I still drove faster than the majority of traffic even until 2005 when I got rid of the car.
Chrysler could use something like the PT Cruiser now a days! At least the ones that weren’t hot garbage.
Affordable, something different, but yet familiar. If I remember you could get a decently equipped one for well under 20k. At least after the rush on them at the beginning that drove the price up (when they couldn’t make enough of them). Kind of like the Maverick more recently (unfortunately the price didn’t come back down on that).
The practical nature of an old school minivan is tough to beat. Family friend has an aging KIA minivan, practical as all get out. 3rd row folds down, 2nd row is captains chairs that she (tiny gal about 5-1) can remove herself. She even overnights in it. For hauling stuff to her flea market days can’t be beat. People hauling with captain chairs and big slider doors is easy and comfortable, the Commander with bad back and hip likes it.
Probably obsoleted by “safety” regs, the big slider doors doubtful on a side impact reg.
Another one that failed but was well laid out, roomy, Chevy Venture van. Lame build quality too bad they didn’t do better. Great people hauler and room in back for gear.
The point of this article was driver ability which is baffling rare.
My odometer is pushing 3 milllion km.
Need a pass on insurance.
Hi Nova,
Amen. One of the things that annoys me about car insurance – beyond the being forced to pay for it – is that my driving record establishes I do not need it. How many decades must I drive, “accident free” before the pants-wetters stop expressing “concern” that I might wreck one day?
Having one of those PT’s it’s not always the easiest car to keep on the straight and narrow. Eric, is that road you were on in good condition? On bumpier roads my PT sometimes skitters on a bump. (My replacement struts are a little stiffer than stock.) But yeah, the automatics are doggy.
Hi Bill!
The guy in the PT knew his business. He kept the PT in it lane even during the descent down Bent Mountain. That is a challenge Clovers always fail. Even when they have a bevy of “assistance” tech to help them!
Re: road surface condition. I mentioned doing the I90 drive, this has to be one of the most lengthy run of terrible worn out interstate Hwy in the US. Perpetually “under construction“. Which is Latin for “grifting for the ages” as this is a WA state specialty turning a one or two season project in six to eight years. The road surface was worn out 20 years ago, absolute truth. They will pick away at it, usually during election years – whoa, progress!
I know you on the east coast areas in NJ etc are subject to the neglect also. It is really inexcusable anywhere.
Visiting VA and NC as the daughter moved around when younger. I liked VA and NC roads all over both states never on anything as bad as what we have here in WA. Driving from Raleigh Durham Airport out east to Greenville, they days later out to the coast both runs on really decent roads. It’s then infuriating to return home to WA with all the money they haul in here and run around on the piss poor roads.
I had to make the dreaded round trip central WA to western WA last week. So happy to blow past the truck caravans eastbound and fell in with 3 other NON clover drivers 10 miles west of the I90 pass – up and over we went 75-80 the entire way. 65 limit? Pffft. One cop focused on the other direction paid us no mind. Waved at in as they exited near my home base, a chick in a 4×4 pickup! She was rockin it all the way home bless you sweetie!
In = one
I rented a PT cruiser on a business trip when they were new. I found it to be a doggier version of the Caravans I was used to, and then I started hearing horror stories about their unreliability.
Then a couple years back I bought one cheap at an impound auction and it was a great car and a lot of cheap, decent handling fun to drive.
The difference? The rental was a standard, plain average automatic PT cruiser. The one I bought had a manual 5 speed and could easily be kept in the powerband. Night and day difference, I kind of miss it as a daily.
I helped my grandson quite a bit recently before he passed his DL test. The advice I gave him when we’d ride together is there’s a) what’s on the paper test, b) what the driving test dude will fail you on, and c) the real world. Thankfully he took that to heart.
‘I’m not Mr Cynical; I’m not the most negative guy in the world.’ — eric
Unexpected praise can elicit surprising results. Last week I had to obtain a registration number on a government website which is full of ambiguities, lacunae, and generates multiple error messages as a standard part of the sign-up process. Upon calling the help desk — which on the previous day had cancelled my trouble ticket after only six hours, when I happened to be out — a helpful and personable young man offered to walk me through the sign-up on the phone. It ended up taking 32 minutes.
He patiently waited while I dug up required data from my files. He admitted that some aspects of the dropdown boxes — such as having Afghanistan instead of the US as the first choice in the alphabetized list of countries — are absurd. He joked that either of us could be an AI bot. And so forth.
When I actually got the coveted number, which I’d expected to take a couple of days, I asked for his boss’s contact so I could compliment his competent assistance. When I did so, both his boss and the next higher-up supervisor sent him emails (copied to me). One had an animated emoji jumping up and down saying ‘GOOD JOB, *****!!!’
Government employees so rarely receive praise rather than complaints, that they are astonished when a member of the public actually thanks them, in the same manner that Eric has done for the anonymous driver in the PT Cruiser.